August 29, 2012

There is a strong trend towards hyperbole in business books these days. Perhaps because everything around us seems to be changing so quickly, every idea is put in the context of how it will change the world. Do you want to build a strong and sustainable company, become a better manager, maybe work more efficiently and provide your employees and customers with tools and services that will improve their daily experience with you? You're changing the world!

But maybe it's not such a stretch. When Stephen Covey passed away last month, I wrote here that:

A lot of business books can improve your career or help you change your business. Stephen Covey’s will change your life. It has changed the world, individual reader by individual reader.

And I stand by that. Covey's modestly titled 7 Habits of Highly Effective People highly affected a lot of people, selling more than 25 million copies in almost 40 languages. It is always sad when someone passes from the world, but in cases like Covey's, we can at least take consolation that his work lives on not only in words on a page, but in the daily lives of so many individuals.

The same can be said of Roger D. Fisher, who passed away over the weekend. His international bestseller, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, has also sold millions of copies and been translated into 36 languages, touching lives all over the world, but his efforts extend beyond that. Even before he released his book, and well after he did so, he set the negotiating table for some of the greatest agreements of the last century.

From Leslie Kaufman's account of Fisher's life in The New York Times:

Professor Fisher is credited with helping initiate the summit meeting between the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan in 1985, convincing Reagan staff members that just meeting to brainstorm and build relations was more important than settling a specific agenda.

In 1979, Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance went to Professor Fisher’s house on Martha’s Vineyard before the meeting at Camp David that would lead to a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. Professor Fisher suggested to Mr. Vance the “single negotiating text” method that was used to bring the parties together, said Bruce M. Patton, who wrote Getting to Yes with Professor Fisher and worked on many diplomatic projects with him. The strategy involved having President Jimmy Carter alone be responsible for writing solutions and letting the other leaders shape the treaty through a back-and-forth critiquing process.

In 1991 in South Africa, Professor Fisher and former students led workshops with both the Afrikaner cabinet and the African National Congress negotiating committee leading into talks to end apartheid and to establish a new constitution.

His upbeat approach to some of the world’s most intractable problems led some critics to assert that he was unrealistic. But Mr. Patton said Professor Fisher recognized and relished the “complexity and irrationality” of the situations he addressed.

Ms. Kaufman ended her obituary of Fisher in The Times by sharing this scene:

His family recalled that when Professor Fisher celebrated his 80th birthday, his colleague John Kenneth Galbraith toasted him by saying, “Whenever I thought, ‘Someone should do something about this,’ it eased my conscience to learn that Roger was already working on it.”

Galbraith himself passed away years ago, but if he were alive today hopefully his conscience could still take ease knowing that his friend left us a tool that can be used to continue his mission of Getting to Yes. Heaven knows we can use it.

And, hopefully, more authors working today will follow his example and, more than simply putting pen to paper, go out and find ways to put their ideas to work in this often complex and irrational world and see if they can change it for the better.

About Dylan Schleicher

Dylan Schleicher has been a part of the 800-CEO-READ claque since 2003. Even though he's stayed on at the company, he has not stayed put. After beginning in shipping & receiving, he joined customer service and accounting before moving into his current, highly elliptical orbit of duties overseeing the ChangeThis and In the Books websites, the company's annual review of books and in-house design. He lives with his wife and two children in the Washington Heights neighborhood on Milwaukee's West Side.

In the Forbes' article that Tom referred to yesterday, the writer Dan Ackman pointed to a list of business books the magazine put together in 2002. Forbes calls these The 20 Most Influential Business Books. As you look down the panel experts, you'll notice our own Jack Covert was among those called to contribute.

Steven Coveys The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Peopleis an excellent book, a great guide for personal effectiveness that draws from a careful and thorough reading of many books in this field. Coveys classic is accessible, sensible, and extremely useful. Its little surprise that so many people cite his habits as tools that help them be more productive in their lives.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday had a major feature titled "New Breed of Business Gurus Rises. " The article provides a ranking of the thought leaders in business today. The ranking system is based on the 2003 book What's the Big Idea?

Stephen Covey's seminal book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, changed the business book landscape. It was a book that introduced us to the concept of paradigm shifts in our lives, and it shifted the paradigm of the entire industry. It has been translated into almost 40 languages and sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.